Best Obscure Arcade Games?

[TrekMD]

I remember playing that game in the arcade!  It was fun!  I never saw this ported to any home system.

[sloan]

I agree it was fun. It was known as Crush Roller in Japan and saw a release to Famicom in the 80's. I have begged homebrewers on various forums over the years to bring it to Colecovision or 5200 and no one seems even slightly interested.

I used to play it on a cocktail cabinet machine at a local arcade in my aunt's small town in the early 80's. The game has many nuances like a cat that walks around and an invisible man who leaves shoe prints. The sound effects are a little annoying, but overall I consider it one of the hidden arcade gems of all time.

Maybe I will see about the Famicom version soon.

[TrekMD]

Any idea of how accurate of a translation the Famicom version is?  It should be possible to play it on the NES, right?

Edit: I started looking for videos of the Famicom version and came upon this...

[align=center:1dycqyqz]Crush Roller [クラッシュローラー] Game Sample - NeoGeo Pocket Color[/align:1dycqyqz]

[sloan]

Y, I forgot about the Neo Geo pocket port.

Funny thing is I looked it up for Famicom and all I found was this pirate clone called Brush Roller:

Brush Roller Unlicensed Famicom

I know I have seen Famicom Crush Roller on ebay for sale before though. Weird.

Also, to answer your question: famicom games play fine on NES with a 72-60 pin adapter. They actually are inside some of the original black box NES cartridges. I got Pinball with one inside it some years ago so am ready if I can pick up the Famicom Crush Roller game.

[TrekMD]

It may be possible to get the ROM and test it on a NES then. 

I also found the same video you found when I was looking. 

[Katzkatz]

I'm not sure how obscure this one is, but it's perhaps a little different from the usual arcade stuff.  It's Sega's Wing War.  Two players go head-to-head with each one taking control of an aircraft of your choice(loads to choose from - helicopters and aeroplanes). There is a "dogfight" mode.  Basically it split the game into "attack phase" and "guard phase", where both players alternate between them and try to destroy one another.  It sort of plays like an arcade flight simulation.  I think there was a Sega 32X port planned, but it got cancelled.  I'm not sure if this perhaps quite what this thread was looking for, but I thought that I mention the game. 

Here's the 2 players cab :-




Here's a video of some gameplay :-

[ARCADE] Wing War 1994 SEGA

[TL]

Never seen that before! Looks like a really cool game, shame it never got a Saturn port.

That is exactly the kind of thing we want to see Katz!

[Katzkatz]

I played the game way back in 1994 at Gatwick Airport with my brother.  That's probably why it resonated with me so much.  That and it's a different style of game.  I've tried to get it working on MAME, but it's buggy at best.  That being said, my PC is a bit old and I haven't updated my MAME for quite a while. 

[dot.fyre]

I agree it was fun. It was known as Crush Roller in Japan

Everytime I saw it (in the UK) it was Crush Roller.
In fact I never knew it was called Make Trax until I watched the Chasing Ghosts documentary.
Brilliant game though. Still have my boxed NGPC copy.

[TrekMD]

That Wing War looks really cool!

[sloan]

Yes, Wing War looks like it would have ported to 32X or Jaguar rather well. I love the 3D polygon games.

[Katzkatz]

Here's a few that are a bit unusual.  First up, F-15 Strike Eagle, which is loosely based on the Microprose flight simulation for the home computers :-



And some video :-

F-15 Strike Eagle | Arcade | Emulación | MAME 0.136u2


Interesting that it got adapted to the arcade.


Next up, is Zool :-

[TL]

I never knew they made F15 and Zool arcade games 

[TrekMD]

I never knew they made F15 and Zool arcade games 

Ditto!  Pretty cool, actually.

[TL]

[align=center:3a5d8x1k]Pepper II, 1982 Exidy[/align:3a5d8x1k]